The Goddess of Wisdom Visits the Pentagon
Minerva, the Greek goddess of wisdom - and it should be hastily added of warriors as well - is coming to the Pentagon in the form of a new initiative aimed at getting academicians to weigh in on various security issues. In a recent New York Times article, Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, would like to have his department fund research projects in the humanities much like it currently does in the sciences and engineering.In its [ed - the Minerva Project] written call for proposals, the department said Minerva was seeking scholars who can, for example, translate original documents, including those captured in Iraq... The department is also looking for computational models that could illuminate how groups make what seem to be irrational decisions, and decipher the way the brain processes social and cultural norms. [emphasis added]
The project, focused as it is on issues of "soft power", is not without its critics. Some see inherent conflicts of interests if the Defense Department is the organizations tasked with approval such RFPs, rather than the National Science Foundation, while others see this as an opportunity for historians, anthropologists and other social scientists to join the national conversation on security.